Saturday was "again" on the heavy side. We had a pretty steady breeze of around 22 knots, but the weather was dominated by huge showers passing by. In these big dark clouds we found ourself surviving +35 knots. The wind started building very fast and pretty much without a descent warning. So all the boats got trapped with a full main up and Jib # 3. Luckily the squal hit us in the upwind section of the race. So the damage on most of the boats was a jib or a mainsail.
16 boats competed in the Racing class, 6 of them finished.
Shark managed to finish and had a very good race. We are getting used to these conditions! In real time and on handicap we had to let a KING 40 and a SYDNEY 39 get away with first and second. Not too bad....
The downside was that our big black kite exploded and that we had to sail with our fractional for the rest of the day and also on sunday.
I was getting really annoyed by the fact that we were only sailing in Survival conditions.... please give us a steady 12 knots ?????!!!!!!!!
Sunday 13/15 knots NE breeze..... thank you! Conditions.... flat water.... no rain.... no squals.... Time to focus on other boats!
We got of the starting line in first position. A Grand Soleil 43 "Antilope", the Sydney 39 "Allard", and later also a King 40 "Weerga" passed us in the first part of the race. No worries here... these boats are faster. We stayed in front of the rest of the fleet only mildly teased by an X35 "Untouchables".....
Also in the Downwind part of the race we managed to stay ahead of the X35. But at the downwind mark, disaster struck us once again. The Medium Heavy got stuck in the "balls" of the Tuff Luff... half way up..... Spi down and upwind with only the main up, the X35 became Untouchable and passed us. After 4 or 5 minutes we cleared our mess, got the heavy jib up...And started to hunt the X35, but way underpowered with the heavy # 3. It was blowing 13 knots at that time, but considering the damage we already had this weekend I didn't gave the call to hoist the Light Medium. In the End... it's only a practice race....
We closed in on them, only to finish 3 minutes behind. Not enough on rating... but we scared them. Sometimes that's enough....
Today we sailed three races, each of them containing two upwind and two downwind legs.
In each race we had a medium start, on the line at the gun, top speed, but not the perfect spot.
So after every first tack we were midfleet and had to struggle to fight our way back to top 5.
By then, the A35s and the J109s were already gone. We managed to get closer towards the finish, but the damage was done. There is just no room for fighting back in IRC2. All these boats we are sailing against are fast and the teams know their boats very well.
It looked like the only thing we could do was hang in there, dont let them slip away . But passing them was out of the question. But somehow we got a good feeling about this we still have a lot of improvement ahead of us. Next year we will be faster than today, excuse me,next week we will be faster than today. And I assume that the other teams are already sailing close to their top speed . So we will get closer!
At the end, we also struggled with the waves, not only with our competitors. We found the boat to be very fast when the waves gave us a break, only a minute without slamming and we gained on the boats ahead of us.
Now we are very curious what flat water will bring us. Even light conditions look promising now!
By Saturday evening we were 6th out of 22 boats.
Sunday gave us a big breeze, and we decided not to sail because we already found what we were looking for.
Big waves and about 25 knots of wind dictated the day.
The tension on board was high Our first line up with other 35 footers. What will it bring us?
First mark was 1 mile upwind, than a 24 mile course around the cans.
After the start, we struggled to find the pace in the big waves. Immediately you could see that the other boats were used to this. After a few minutes banging in the waves we found ourselves in the middle of the pack.
After the upwind mark, which we rounded after the 2 J109s, the JPK1010, and all the Archambault 35s it became a drag race. Like ducks in a row we started on our 24 mile long beating.
But we were happy because the one thing we had in mind for this weekend was already established. We came here to find the same boatspeed as Stiletto. Stiletto is a First 35 from the UK with already a good palmares (3rd @ Cowes Week).
We rounded the mark a few boatlenghts in front of Stiletto. But could we hold our position?
Every mark we stretched away with another 30 to 40 seconds, and after a good 4 hours racing we finished almost 5 minutes ahead of them.
What will the upwind, downwinds bring us tomorrow?
After corrected time, we came in 7th today, 16 boats finished the offshore regatta.
Not good, not bad . After all, its our first race.
Too bad that we had pretty rough conditions, it was very hard to compare boatspeed with other boats and tune up against them. Maybe tomorrow?
Since the beginning, we have been trying to get this boat as fast as possible. You have to deal with hull shape, fairing of the keel and rudder, choice of sailmaker, sail designs, the team, the deck layout, and so on.... every minute of every day you think of extra things you could do, and also about things you will forget to do.... that's an aging thing (yep, already).
One of the most important things is the rating, how fast do we have to sail against our closest rivals, which handicap factor will they give us?
You fill in an endless bunch of papers with hundreds of numbers, so that the guys at the RORC can make a "correct" calculation. An important thing to do, is to weigh your boat, IT IS ALWAYS HEAVIER THAN WHAT THE BROCHURE SAYS !!! And the heavier the boat the better the handicap factor. If you do not weigh your boat, they (RORC) automaticly use the numbers on the brochure.
But in Belgium and Holland, every official measurer was on holiday in August. Well, that's nice for them.... but that leaves me with a boat that couldn't be measured before the Dutch Nationals.
Now we have a rating which tells us to be 36 seconds per hour faster than the other First 35's.... I would love that to happen, but it has been a while since I've believed in ferytales.
It is what it is.... there is nothing more we could have done!
Third and last training before the DUTCH NATIONALS
Our first training was ok, as you could see before, we had a pretty steady breeze of around 15 knots. But having no idea what the normal boatspeed should be, this was only a pretty fun day on the water in stead of a real training. A maiden trip voyage can never be described as a good exercise.
Day 2 of the training sessions was, as we like to call it, SURVIVAL! Around 30 knots of wind and a broken halyard after 2 minutes beating upwind, kept us alert for more damage. So we opted for safe sailing and didn't train on boathandling and manoeuvres. However, we flew the fractional spinnaker and had a blast sailing the New First 35 downwind at 11-12 knots. Day 3, as we ordered, was light..... We wanted to sail with our A1,5, an assymetric sail for light to very light conditions. When you struggle to keep the symmetric flowing, an A-sail will give you more push and flow around the sails. But none of the crew, coming from a one design class, has ever sailed with such a set-up. So we needed at least one day of light winds to try the sail for the very first time before sailing the Dutch Nationals. And we did! We had between 7 and 11 knots all day... and for the very first time we could practise some manoeuvres and were able to concentrate on boatspeed. In a line up with a Sun Fast 40 Performance, we noticed that at 75% of the time we had same speed and same height. And only a few times the First accelarated and stretched away from the Sun Fast. At other times we pointed 5 degrees higher. This tells us that the boat is capable of much more than we squeeze out of her. If we struggle to keep consistancy in height and speed, we are in for a laugh at the Dutch Nationals this weekend.
For us, The IRC Nationals will be a huge learning curve. Trying to keep up with the other First 35's, A35's and the J109's. A real training where we can start comparing and tuning our mast. Wish us luck!
What a day on the water. With the complete crew ready at noon, we went out for our first test sail. With 12 to 17 knots true, the conditions couldn't be better. The boat behaved far beyond our expectations! Steady and fast (as we hoped) The sails looked beautiful, and yet again North have delivered what they stand for.... Quality!
July 30 : Anti fouling Sat July 31 : Put name on the boat and prepare the mast Sun aug 1 : Instruments and mast Mon aug 2 : Mast on boat Thue aug 3 : IRC Measurement
THE COMPETITION IN IRC 2 - ANTWERP RACE 2010
=> 1.025 
